


Scar Tissue

by saraubs



Category: Teen Wolf (TV), teen wolf - Fandom
Genre: AU, Extreme Prejudice, M/M, Off-screen torture, Teen Wolf, Violence, war time violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-19
Updated: 2015-06-26
Packaged: 2018-02-13 21:56:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2166585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saraubs/pseuds/saraubs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Stiles remembers talking through this exact scenario with Derek. Back then he’d only ever thought about getting caught in the abstract. He remembers lying on the blankets, Derek’s feet curled around his, reassuring him that there was nothing anyone could do to get him to talk. They’d both read 1984, and Stiles knew that there were no fears that could be used against him; there was nothing that terrified him more than the thought of losing the only family he had left.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

\--

Stiles hears them long before he sees them. Not surprising, since his eyes are so caked with old blood that it’s going to take some serious scrubbing to get them clean. His arms ache from their position above his head and he’s starting to forget things. He can’t remember if it’s day or night, but that happened early. Now he’s starting to forget things that are important: the smell of Derek’s hair, the small snuffling noise Logan makes when he’s sleeping, the taste of, well, anything. He can’t remember the last time they fed him. There’s water sometimes, mostly so they can wake him up to ask more questions, but it must be enough. He’s still alive. 

When the sound of footsteps gets closer Stiles realizes that he was wrong. There aren’t two. Just one. The worst one. 

“Stiles,” the syrupy-sweet voice coos from behind metal bars. “Baby, you’re not looking so well.” 

“Well, I thought about getting all dolled up,” Stiles croaks, his throat throbbing with the pain of speaking. “But then I remembered I wouldn’t wipe shit off my boots for you.” 

“Still spunky,” Kate says, her words long and drawn out. “Not surprising, really.” She slithers inside his cell and runs a gloved hand down his face. “We both know that Derek likes a boy,” – she leers, taking absolute delight in every second of this – “or girl, whatever the case may be, with a little spark.” She twists his head back as she finished speaking, and Stiles is too tired to fight against it. His neck spasms, but he grits his teeth and waits for whatever she has in store for today. 

The heels of her boots are loud enough to make his head pound, but he wills himself not to lose control. He will not show fear in front of her, he tells himself firmly. He will not give Kate Argent what she wants. 

“My boys tell me that you’re still being difficult Stiles.” She clucks her tongue and digs sharp fingernails into the base of his neck. “I thought I told you that being difficult wasn’t going to get you anywhere.” 

He grunts a little as her nails draw blood; not loudly, but enough to make her smile. “It’s time to be a good boy, Stiles,” she says, picking tools out of a bag that Stiles hadn’t even noticed she’d been carrying. “It’s time to give me what I want.” 

\--

Stiles remembers talking through this exact scenario with Derek. Back then he’d only ever thought about getting caught in the abstract. He remembers lying on the blankets, Derek’s feet curled around his, reassuring him that there was nothing anyone could do to get him to talk. They’d both read 1984, and Stiles knew that there were no fears that could be used against him; there was nothing he was more terrified of than losing the only family he had left. 

It hadn’t been a lie, not really. Back then there hadn’t been any fears to exploit. Now, however, Stiles is open to a whole world of horror he’d never dreamed of. The low slick of stilettos against the cool concrete is enough to make him shake. The static buzz of electricity makes him whimper. The slow slide of a knife against its leather sheath brings a wave of nausea. There are so many fears a person can have, Stiles realizes, once they really start to think about it. 

\--

“Okay, fine,” Stiles sobs. He thinks it’s been weeks. He could be wrong though; his sense of time is completely distorted. 

“I think he’s ready,” one of Argent’s goons laughs, giving Stiles another prod for good measure. 

The tears fall freely; Stiles is long past the point where he can do anything to stop them. He tries to think of Derek, but can barely conjure his face. It makes him laugh, a sound that’s high-pitched and barely human. He’s stared at that face for hours, traced his fingers over it countless times, has thousands of pictures of varying quality, and now he can scarcely remember the color of Derek’s eyes. 

It’s just as well; that’s probably what he deserves for giving in.


	2. Origin Story

_“How long are you going to sit there and stare at me?” I ask, looking up from the wrinkled pieces of paper that lie in front of me. “I can’t concentrate.”_

_“Boss says it’s taking too long,” Kate’s lackey – Pete, I overheard earlier – grunts. “I’m here to make sure you’re taking your responsibilities seriously.”_

_“Boss?” I snort. “Are you auditioning for an extra in a mob film? Pretty sure you can call her Kate. Or Miss Argent, if she’s not into the whole formality thing. Or hell, let’s even call her by her title, Se –”_

_Pete clears his throat and I trail off, pressing pen to paper once again. I write for another thirty, forty seconds maybe, before getting distracted and looking back up. “This is just really not the best way to get me to go faster.” Pete raises an eyebrow and I take that as an invitation to continue. “If she really wants this done quickly, there’s this little invention called a computer. Portable, has keys, authors use them all the time for this very purpose.”_

_Pete doesn’t answer, but he does slip his phone from his pocket and sends a text._

_I’ve managed to bang out another couple of lines by the time Ugly Henchman Number Two makes an appearance._

_“He says he needs a computer,” Pete grunts._

_Ugly Henchman – whose ugliness is much more of an internal thing now that I think of it – otherwise known as Jason, glares over at me. He smells like pizza and my stomach grumbles loudly. “What do you need a computer for anyway?” His rat-like face is suspicious and I actually have to hold back laughter. It’s not that I don’t think these assholes deserve to be laughed at; it’s just that I really want the computer._

_“My penmanship just isn’t what it used to be before I had each of my fingers broken,” I say, fumbling with the pen._

_“Bones heal,” Jason grunts. “And there can’t be that much to write. We’re not interested in your life story, just anything that has to do with Derek Hale.”_

_My chest clenches, hearing his name, but I just smirk and shrug my shoulders. What I don’t say is that the two things are one and the same._

\--

** July 1999 **

I met Derek for the first time when I was six years old, too small to fit in the front of my mother’s jeep, and scared shitless that she was going to die. She was still mostly lucid at that time, the dementia not having yet fully stripped her of her personality. Every day we’d play the same game: she’d tell me five things she loved about me and I’d follow up with five things I loved about her. I hadn’t realized at the time that it had been her way of keeping track. Years after I’d found notebooks that she’d hidden and then forgotten about, filled with throwaway lines like “I love the way you give me half of your Oreos” and “I love your curiosity; you ask the best questions.” She was a librarian, and the only person who could answer my questions to my satisfaction, before the disease took that away too.

For months I’d heard my parents discuss the pros and cons of receiving the bite, and my mother was convinced that Talia Hale could help her. Werewolves could grant bites in special circumstances back then, if the person was deemed compatible with the pack and properly understood the risks. Dad and Talia had a working relationship and so, even though she must have gotten hundreds of requests per year, the Alpha agreed to a preliminary meeting.

The morning she went out to the preserve, my mother, who still had a driver’s license, dropped me off at Scott’s house under strict orders to listen to Mr. McCall and not gorge on peanut butter cookies. What she _didn’t_ say was “don’t climb in the back of the jeep so that you can meet a real live werewolf”, and really, that was as good as an invitation. I would have gotten away with it too, if I hadn’t run into the world’s surliest ten-year-old. I made it all the way over the bumpy, uneven road through the woods without so much as a sneeze to give my position away only to walk straight into Derek’s perpetually frowny face. He’d also been exiled from the house and was trying to eavesdrop, albeit a little more successfully than me, and was definitely not expecting to be interrupted.

Since he dealt with his fear in a very different way than my instant tears and given the fact that I’d essentially scared the shit out of him, he fell straight to the ground and popped out his little baby werewolf fangs like nobody’s business. Stunned and elated that I’d managed to find a werewolf with minimal investigative effort, I did the first thing that came to my mind: reached out and rubbed a stubby finger over his bumpy forehead. He recoiled, seeming more afraid of me than I was of him, so I clearly thought I’d put my Stilinksi charm to good use and put him at ease with a well-thought out question.

“Where are your eyebrows?” I asked, lifting his hair so that I could peer along his forehead. Despite the fact that I still couldn’t get the hang of my tremulants and my version of “eyebrows” sounded more like “eyebows”, he seemed to get the gist of my question.

He shrugged, his scowl deepening. “Laura thays that ith’s because they can’t pothibly get any bigger.” At ten Derek clearly hadn’t gotten the hang of talking around fangs, and even though it seemed to be a sore point, since he wouldn’t look me in the eye the entire time, I was absolutely delighted.

“I wouldn’t mind losing my eyebrows if I could be a werewolf,” I said, helping him up. “I wouldn’t mind if all my hair disappeared!”

Derek took a deep breath and didn’t answer until his features had smoothed out and he looked completely human again. “Yeah?” he asked shyly.

“Definitely! If my mom gets bit then I’ll get bit and my dad’ll get bit and we’ll be a family of werewolves like you.” My mind raced, thinking of the endless possibilities that werewolf-enhanced senses would open. Scott would have to join me, of course; I could already see the two of us running through the woods, chasing rabbits and whatever else werewolves got up to in their free time.

“That’s not the way it works,” Derek said, the _stupid_ implied. “Only my mom can bite people, because she’s the alpha.”

“My mom could be the alpha too!”

“There’s only one alpha,” Derek sneered, his eyebrows back and in full force now. “The alpha’s the strongest and the smartest and the best, and it will always be my mom.” He folded his arms and smirked down at me, while I tried my best not to cry.

Instead, I settled for kicking dirt in his face. “My mom is way smarter than yours!” I screamed, turning around to race for the front door.

Derek growled, and I when I looked back he was back in his beta-form and closing in fast. Now I don’t remember if I tripped or if Derek actually managed to drag me down, but at the time I was pretty adamant that it was one hundred percent his fault. I wailed, and before Derek could do anything to shut me up, violent or otherwise, our mothers were running down the front porch.

“Derek!” Talia growled, her voice drowning out my mother’s angry descent into Polish. I tried to look properly chagrined as I watched Talia flash her red eyes, reducing Derek into a whimpering puppy. He changed back instantly, and I actually felt a bit sorry for him. My mom was smart and strong, but I started to think that maybe Derek was right and she just wasn’t _scary_ enough to be an alpha.

While Talia pulled the story of what happened out of a reluctant Derek, my mother proceeded to scold me in angry Polish. Annoyed and exasperated when she couldn’t pull my attention away from Talia, she gave up with a long-suffering sigh.

“I’m going to have to go, Alpha Hale,” she said, tilting her head out of respect. I resisted the urge to copy her, but just barely. “I promise that the next time I come there will be no stragglers.”

“Should I be expecting a visit from the authorities?” Talia was stiff, overly formal, and even I at six could hear the slight tremor of fear in her voice.

“Believe me,” my mother said, grabbing my hand, “there’s only one little boy who’s getting reported to the authorities tonight.”

As my mother dragged me toward the jeep I turned around for one last glance at Derek. His mother’s back was turned to talk to a teenaged girl – the infamous Laura, I later found out – and he curled his lip into a silent snarl. I retaliated by sticking my tongue out.

It was a beautiful start to a twenty-year relationship.

\-- 

_I’m taking a break when I hear footsteps echoing up the hallway. It’s not Pete, Jason, or Kate, and for a second I believe – hope, wish, fantasize – that it’s someone with food. My pencil is starting to look like a curly fry, and I’d really rather not eat wood. I smile for a second, wishing that Derek was here to hear that thought. In any case, I’d really rather not eat a pencil. But anything else would do, really. I’d take a tofu burger at this point. I’d eat yams, which is a level of desperation I never thought I’d reach._

_A figure steps out of the shadows and plucks out a key to my cell. I’m so distracted by what the dude has braced against his hip – a shiny, beautiful laptop – that I don’t even register the high cheekbones or perfect dimples until he’s nearly on top of me._

_“Danny,” I whisper when his face finally comes into view. “My savior.”_

_“Save it, Stilinksi,” Danny says, giving me the same frankly unimpressed look he’d whipped out often in high school. So I was really interested in my potential datability back then – sue me._

_He puts the laptop on the table in front of me, flips it open, and then types in a password. “You have access to Microsoft word only,” Danny says, twisting the laptop around so that the screen is facing me. “If you want to waste your time trying to figure out some way to communicate with people outside this room, be my guest, but know that I’ve personally handled everything on this piece of hardware.”_

_I want to say thanks, but I can’t make the words come out. I know that for once I should just keep my mouth shut, but it’s so hard. Danny is steadfastly avoiding eye contact – whether because I look like shit or because he hates me or is disappointed in me for everything that’s happened since we spoke last, I’m not sure, but I manage to snag his wrist before he can turn around and leave._

_“Not even solitaire Danny? You wound me.” I swallow past the lump in my throat and throw out a wink while Danny shakes his hand off without a smile._

_“Jokes, Stiles?” His voice is flat, expressionless. “Whatever, it’s your death wish. Everyone told you in high school you should have stayed out of this shit.”_

_“They sure did,” I say as Danny lets himself out._

_What no one understood is that it was never a choice._

** Summer 1999 **

My mom did not hold true to her promise and over the next few months I saw Derek more than I saw Scott. Hell, it was more than I saw my own father. Talia agreed to give my mother the bite, but she had to go through a trial period of living with the pack, as mandated by the City Council and the Interspecies Protection Agency. She not only had to make sure she was compatible with all members, so as to not breed conflict, but she also had to go through rigorous testing of her control to try to ensure that she’d be prepared when the time came. There was a lot of mental work that Talia helped my mom struggle through, and for a little while it seemed she was getting better through pure strength of will, without any supernatural influence at all. Those months were some of the best of my childhood.

I was overjoyed that my mom was on her way to becoming a full-fledged superhero, and spent most of my time on the preserve getting Derek to show me how to live like a werewolf. After I’d won him over with cool facts about ants and half of a box of melted Smarties (alternatively remembered as after his mother flashed her alpha eyes and told him he had to be nice to me) he warmed up little by little. I like to think that even though our friendship was born of necessity combined with Derek’s innate fear of disappointing his mother, eventually I started to grow on him. If nothing else, I seemed to be the only person who could make him laugh. It also helped that my mother brought him on special trips to the library after hours, and he seemed to understand that he didn’t get her in the pack without the annoying side effect of having to take me as well.

By the end of that summer I was as much a part of the Hale pack as my mother, and while I spent most of my days roaming around the preserve with Derek, sometimes Laura and his older brother Josh would bring us, his younger sister Cora, and his three little cousins into town. One day, while we were on our way for ice cream, an argument broke out amongst the younger Hales about the coveted status of being my best friend. I was a novelty, being the only human that hung around with a pack of werewolves, but it still felt pretty great to be the center of all that attention; even better was the way that Derek just smiled smugly when the excitement, the sugar high, and the sun became too much and I snuggled into his side to nap on the drive back.

We still fought – all the time, really – but as the months started to drag out and my mother’s application still wasn’t approved, Derek was the one who was there. When we went back to school in the fall and the teacher told everyone my real name, Derek snuck out during my recess period to cheer me up. And then, when the legislation passed denying any werewolves the right to bite a consenting human, Derek let me curl up on his bed, play turn after turn on his Nintendo 64, and kept up a steady supply of the frozen chocolate pudding pops his mom used to make for us.

My mom deteriorated pretty fast after that; the doctors said it was a natural progression of her disease, but I was pretty sure that it was because she had given up hope. She had nothing to look forward to and the vigorous mental workouts she’d been going through for the last few months came to an abrupt stop. At first she was just quicker to anger and less interested in reading, but functional on a day-to-day basis. Then she took to locking herself in her room, refusing to eat, and, worst of all, ripping up books when she’d get halfway through and forget what she was reading. I couldn’t reconcile this volatile, unfamiliar personality with the woman who had walked me through countless bookstores, brushing her fingers up and down the spines lovingly. The first and only time she turned her ire on me I ran out the front door and pounded down the street, tears streaming down my face. I was so angry with everyone – with my father, for not being home; with my mother, for being sick; with Talia, for not biting her against regulations; and with the IPA for all its new and idiotic rules surrounding the werewolf population.

Even now I don’t know how he knew something was wrong, or how he got to me so quickly, but the tears didn’t have time to dry before Derek showed up, his pinched Stiles-you-annoying-shit look replaced with something I saw infrequently, and never when anyone else was around. He took me by the hand and walked home with me, staying to read silently with my mom for hours afterward. He never brought up my tears, or the tiny hiccups that plagued me for the entire walk home. He never mentioned to Cora, or the twins, or little Annie that I’d curled up in my mom’s lap like a baby and let her run her fingers through my hair, wishing that everything could go back to normal. Even when we fought, even when he got so mad at me that his eyes flashed yellow and he had to stalk out of the Hale house rather than swipe at me with claws he couldn’t control, he never used those memories against me.

Two years later, when my mom passed away after months of being bedridden and nearly catatonic, Derek was once again the one to find me. This time, he didn’t walk me home right away. This time, crushed by the weight of his own grief, he managed his first full shift, right on the steps of the library where we’d both spent so much time with my mother. His howl of grief seemed to match the pain that was welling up inside me, begging to be released. The hot, burning pressure that wouldn’t resolve itself into tears was made vocal by Derek’s high-pitched whine.

When we finally started to make our way back home, he stayed tight to my side, keeping me out of traffic when the blinding tears made their appearance. Then, when we made it to the familiar comfort of my own house, he nosed against my palm until I walked him to my bedroom, and there he curled up on my worn Spiderman pillowcase and was content to let me sob into his fur until the ache in my chest was too heavy to fight and I succumbed to the pull of sleep.

It was less than a week after her death that the Werewolf Education Act passed and Derek and his family were shipped off to a school that could “better suit their physical, emotional, and social needs”. It made me sick to think it, but I was glad that mom wasn’t around to see it happen.   

\-- 

_I’ve been writing for nearly three days straight when they finally bring me some food. I know it’s supposed to be a reward for my compliance, and that alone nearly makes me toss it back in their faces._

_It smells – and looks – like someone’s old lunch, found in the back of some fridge, but I’m hungry enough that it tastes gourmet. I’m not sure if they’ve assumed I won’t get food poisoning, or if they just don’t care, but they stick around to watch me eat._

_“Afraid that I’m going to use week-old tuna to bust out of here?” I ask, stuffing my mouth as fully as I possibly can; I’ll deal with any stomach trouble later._

_They don’t answer right away and since I’m willing to do pretty much anything to district myself from writing about my private life, I start to chatter. It’s a reflex that’s never gone away, despite how much everything else has changed. Despite how much_ I’ve _changed. It’s hard enough to rehash all these memories, not knowing when or if I’ll even see Derek again, but it’s worse knowing that Kate is going to read them. While she says that my “confession” is needed so that I can be properly punished for my crimes against humanity, I’m partially convinced that the only reason she wants this is so that she can have a front-seat to Derek’s suffering. She’s still obsessed with him, that much is obvious._

_“If I were going to escape,” I say conversationally, “I would think of a better way.”_

_“You got nothing but the clothes on your back, kid,” Pete responds. As psychotic werewolf hunters go, Pete’s not that bad. He doesn’t purposefully antagonize me and he did text Kate about getting me a laptop when I wanted one. He usually smells like grape bubblegum and his cell phone has a Bubble Guppies sticker on the back, so maybe he has kids of his own, making him somewhat empathetic._

_“I don’t have to have them,” I say suggestively, throwing in a wink for good measure. Truthfully, the clothes are pretty rancid and the past few years have stripped away any discomfort I used to have with nudity. Part of me wants to get naked just to make these guys uncomfortable._

_It’s Jason who responds, with a sneer and a twisted look of disgust. “Like anyone here would touch you.” He walks over and grabs the tray away from me, pushing me in the direction of the laptop. I curl my hands into fists and breathe deeply; nothing good can come of striking out against him. My anger simmers, low and hot in my gut, ready to be unleashed, and I can definitely understand why Derek used his anger as his anchor all those years ago. Logically, I know it’s useless to be angry, and I know I shouldn’t let their prejudice get me down. So they think I’m disgusting, they think_ Derek _is disgusting? I know better. Instead of retaliating, I just put my head down, shut my mouth, and write until I’m lost in the foggy sea of memories._

** October 2008 **

“Laura thinks I should move to New York.” As was his usual prerogative, Derek stalked in and pushed me aside so that he could take over half my bed, without so much as a “hello” or a “please” or a “move your ass, Stiles”.

“By all means, Derek, have a seat.” I was hot and tired and way beyond done with the chem assignment I was working on with Lydia, and in no mood to coach Derek through another brother-sister spat.

“Laura’s a brat,” I grumbled, turning through Lydia’s notes and scribbling my additions into the margins. “Just tell her you don’t like the city. Tell her that you’re happy here.”

Derek was silent beside me, and maybe for someone who knew him in passing that would have seemed completely normal. But for someone who had spent the majority of the past three years with him curled up on his bed, that whole silent and brooding shit was not gonna fly.

“All right,” I said, closing Lydia’s notebook and making to toss it across the room to my desk. “Why – ”

Derek grabbed my wrist before I could make the toss, and plucked the notebook out of my hand, nostrils flaring. “Lydia,” he said flatly. We’d had conversations about intonation before, but Derek Hale was as stubborn as he was gorgeous.

“Yeah, Lydia,” I said, my cheeks flushing under the heat of Derek’s stare. “Yea high, insanely smart, deigning to be my partner for this chemistry project.”

“I don’t like it.” Derek took the notebook and threw it on the floor, then pulled me up so that he could bury his nose in my neck, presumably to get the smell of one strawberry blonde bombshell out of his nostrils. Derek had always been surprisingly tactile despite his stoicism, and since Laura moved I was pretty sure I was his only source of physical affection. It may have seemed weird to an outsider, and my dad definitely did not understand it, but if there was ever a guy who needed a good long hug every once in a while it was Derek Hale.

“Don’t worry big guy,” I said, repositioning so that I could evade beard burn. There was absolutely no value in walking around scratched up and itchy if I couldn’t even reap the benefits of Derek sexily rubbing his stubble all over me. “She’s none too thrilled about it either. Harris is pissed at her for making a correction to one of his tests last week so it he decided to land her with me for this group thing.”

Derek shifted so that he could look me in the eye. “You’re nobody’s punishment,” he growled. “Harris is a dick, and if Lydia doesn’t want you then she’s an idiot.” He settled back down, his arms crossed behind his head, looking every bit like an underwear model. Seriously, it was like I was being tested: fifteen, perpetually horny, and Derek Hale in my bed every single day. I was not strong enough to endure that kind of torture.

I flushed, unsure of how to respond. Derek had gotten a lot more vocal with his compliments over the past few months, and I still didn’t know how to handle them. Seeing your werewolf best friend scowl darkly at you while saying _of course you’re attractive to gay guys, Stiles_ brought about certain _feelings._ The thing was I _knew_ that Derek knew that my feelings were slowly becoming more-than-friendly. Such was the downside of hanging out with the supernatural. That meant that either he A) thought that the whole thing was vaguely incestuous since we grew up together and wanted to save me the embarrassment of having to turn me down or B) his pinched scowl meant he wanted to get all up on this and was just too noble to do anything about it. My bet was on a heaping pile of option A.

“Are you listening?”

“Uh, yeah, listening.” I grinned, giving him a thumbs up and earning myself the first bitchy eye roll of the evening. “I am onboard the listening train, destination Listenville.”

“Laura says it’s safer out there. The east coast is less volatile, and New York is pretty accepting of werewolves in general.”

“It’s not so bad here, with the Argents gone,” I argued, as the curly fries I ate an hour ago threatened to make a reappearance. “Is it?”

Derek didn’t answer and instead pretended to be distracted by the highlighter I’d left uncapped on the bed.

“What happened this time?” Another downside to having a werewolf best friend: he could always tell when someone roughed me up a little in the locker room or on the field and threatened to go full-out medieval, but he healed so quickly that I would never know if anything happened unless he told me. Surprising to no one, Derek wasn’t forthcoming with his own problems.

“It was nothing,” Derek muttered. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Well unfortunately for you,” I countered, trying in vain to pull two hundred pounds of werewolf toward me. “I’m not taking no for an answer.”

“Leave me alone, Stiles.”

I poked him in the ribs with the highlighter. “Derek,” I sang. “Derek, Derek, Derek.”

“Stiles!” he snarled, turning around to flash his eyes at me. “I said leave me alone.”

“Fuck that noise. Honestly, Derek, I’m not six years old anymore. You came over here to talk, so man up and use your goddamn words.”

“They wouldn’t let me in the library.” Derek’s face crumpled and it took everything I had not to take him and kiss him right then.

“That’s bullshit!” I rocketed the highlighter across the room and slid off the bed, suddenly too full of vibrating energy to speak. “My…my,” I sucked in air, trying to squeeze breath into lungs that felt too small. “My mother did _everything_ for that library,” I said, feeling something dark and ugly rise up in my chest. “They had _no right._ ”

Derek pulled me back on the bed before I could trip, or break something, or call and give that old bat Florence Hinkle a piece of my mind. “Stiles,” Derek said, bracing a shoulder with each hand. “Breathe, Stiles, come on. Deep breaths through the nose and out the mouth.”

“It’s just,” I wheezed, starting to feel light-headed and shaky, “not fair.”

“Bylaw seventy-two,” Derek said, his mouth a grim line on a prematurely tired face. “Parents have the right to refuse werewolf entrance to a public building in the event that they feel unsafe for their children.”

“Who?” I couldn’t manage any more than the single word with my chest still squeezing like a vice.

“It doesn’t matter. It’s not a big deal.”

I didn’t have to be a werewolf to know that he was lying, but there was no use trying to push him further. “I could go get some books for you?”

“It’s not about the books.” Derek sighed and pulled me back down on the bed. He threaded his fingers through mine, shifting a little when my heartbeat spiked. We held hands all the time, a remnant from childhood that never went away. It had just never felt this _intimate_ before.

“Maybe you should go,” I said, my chest constricting at the very thought. “After the thing at the grocery store a few weeks ago, now the library…Maybe Laura is right. New York would probably be better for you.”

Derek’s thumb slid up the center of my palm, tracing lightly along the thenar crease. I suppressed a shudder, but Derek could obviously tell how this was affecting me. “I don’t want to go,” he said softly, inching closer. His feet bumped against mine and more than anything I wanted to slot the rest of our bodies together. I worried that my palms were sweaty and gross, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t make myself let go of Derek’s hand.

“She’s pack,” I countered, even though him going across the country was the last thing I wanted. “She’ll keep you safe.”

“And who will keep you safe?” Derek asked. He traced a single finger further down, running right up my wrist, and I tried to force myself to focus on something – _anything –_ else. “Do you want me to go?”

Derek actually had the audacity to look _worried_ and I wanted to give him shit for that, but all I could manage was a punched out “no, of course not. I _need_ you,” and then he was kissing me.

Derek was kissing me. God bless option B.

Derek kissed with the same single-minded determination he did most things. His confidence was inspiring and for the first time in my life my brain just locked. Instead of thinking about my lack of experience or how much I wanted him to enjoy kissing me more than he had enjoyed kissing anyone he had been with before, I thought of nothing other than the slick slide of his tongue against mine and the firm press of his fingers into my back. My body _burned_ under his touch and there was no second-guessing as he pressed me into the sheets, only to peel away for just long enough to gaze down at me like I was something special. Like I was the most important fucking thing he’d ever seen.

“ _Stiles,”_ he gasped, sounding as wrecked as I felt, and that was all the reassurance I needed, really.

I dragged him back down and let myself get completely lost in Derek Hale for the first time.

\-- 

_The solid thud of fist against flesh is a sound with which I have become far too accustomed over the past few weeks. I know that I should have really kept my mouth shut. I know that I should just give Kate what she asks for, without question. Still, I’m also one hundred percent certain that some of the information she wants is for her own twisted agenda rather than that of the IPA, and I don’t want to give her the fucking satisfaction._

_God, what I would give to personally wipe that smirk off her face. I would tear her apart if given the chance; I would decorate this room with her blood for everything she’s taken from me – from Derek. I know my chances of making it out of this compound are nearly zero, and if taking Kate out first meant that I had a few weeks less to live, then that was a price I was willing to pay._

_Still, since killing her is impossible, I know there’s no point in pissing her off._

_It’s a lesson I’ve always had trouble learning._

** September 2013 **

Derek slammed the freezer door so hard that the entire refrigerator shook. He pulled open drawers with a vengeance, rooting through them with no care for what toppled out on the floor, until he found what he was looking for: a thin blue cloth. He wrapped the frozen peas in the cloth and then passed them to me.

“Put that on your eye,” he growled, still refusing to look at me.

I pressed the peas to the side of my face, wincing at the slight sting. Derek’s hands twitched, like he was itching to press them to the cut, but instead he folded his arms and sat in the chair across from me.

“I’m not apologizing for this,” I said, my chin jutting out.

“Jail, Stiles? They were going to bring you to jail. What the hell would I tell your father?”

“The truth.” I stared down at the take out containers that were still sitting on the table from earlier this evening. “He taught me to stand up for what I believe in.”

“He also taught you to use your damn brain,” Derek growled, his nails biting into the finished wood.

I looked up at Derek, my face contorted in fake outrage. “That is mahogany!” Really, it was some cheap synthetic wood, but we bought it at a flea market because it looked like it could hold up our combined weight. That theory had been tested a time or two, and it turned out that it could.

“Jokes, Stiles? Really? You want to joke about this? You were in the middle of a riot, Stiles! Do you have any idea how dangerous that was? Evidently not, since you’re sitting there with your face busted up, cracking jokes like you’re fucking invincible.”

“Werewolves are dying, Derek!” Derek recoiled as I screamed. _Good,_ I thought viciously, wanting him to just wake up and realize what was going on in the world. “You think that because it’s half a world away that it can’t happen here?”

“I think that you throwing yourself in front of a Taser isn’t going to solve werewolf rights problems in Russia. I think that when you texted and said “friendly protest” you knew it was bullshit and that’s why you didn’t tell me to my face.”

“I knew you would worry, that’s all.”

“Worry?” Derek’s face contorted, and for a minute I thought he was going to fully shift. Instead he looked me straight in the eye and said, “I wouldn’t have let you go.” He then stormed away from the table, his chair toppling over in his wake. 

“Let me?” I screeched at his retreating back. The pull of my jaw sent a spark of pain up to my temple that I ignored in favor of chasing after Derek. “You’re my boyfriend, not my boss. You don’t get to _let me_ do anything.”

Derek flipped open his book and stared viciously at the page, intent on ignoring me despite the fact that I knew he couldn’t read when he was pissed off.

Knowing that he wouldn’t try to stop me, not when his control was already so tenuous, I reached out and plucked the book from his hands. I then dropped to my knees in front of his chair and took his cheeks in my hands. “Derek, what do you expect me to do? We review these articles in class and all I can think is _what if that was Derek?_ If we don’t try to stop this, if we don’t try to show people why this is wrong, then how are we supposed to stop it from happening here?”

“I don’t need you to stand up for me,” Derek said. “Getting hurt is not going to prove anything.”

I glared up at him, not understanding how someone who had suffered as much as he had at the hands of hunters could be so difficult, so completely apathetic. “Maybe I’m not only doing it for you. Maybe this is for Scott, for the pack, for your mom – ” I gulped in some air, trying to make the words easier, even though that never happened. Mentioning her was always like a knife to the chest. “And for my mom, too.”

“They wouldn’t want this for you either.” Derek no longer looked angry; he looked lost, his green eyes blank in the same way they had been for months after the fire. He moved my hands from where they’d migrated, right above the dip of his hips. Then he got up and walked to the guest bedroom, to the tiny single bed that was only ever used by Scott when he made the trip out for a weekend, and shut the door quietly.

I sat on the floor, staring down the hall with frozen peas pressed to my face until my whole head was numb.

*

When I woke up the next morning, Derek’s duffle bag was on the kitchen table, and he was pouring coffee into a thermos. The keys to the Camaro lay on the table; the bright _Welcome to Niagara Falls_ keychain from our trip last summer looked out of place in the dimly lit room.  

My throat was already hot and scratchy from all the yelling the night before and my head was pounding from the bruise that had formed while I slept. I looked up at Derek, blinking sleeping from my eyes. “What are you doing?” Thankfully, I sounded much calmer than I felt. Despite the fact that I knew Derek could sense my anxiety, I took a quick seat to hide the fact that my legs were shaking.

“I’m leaving.” Terse, to the point. A completely Derek answer.

“No shit, Sherlock. Where are you going? How long until you’ll be back? And were you planning on sneaking out like a thief?”

“I’ve been up for a while, waiting for you. I didn’t want to wake you.” He capped the Thermos and sat across from me. “I’m leaving,” he repeated.

“I think we’ve established that. A little clarity is what I’m looking for here. And, you know, maybe an explanation? For example, are you going to run away whenever we fight about this, because I can tell you right now that I’m not going to stop.”

“I’m leaving for good.” Derek’s voice was bland and emotionless and it echoed through the quiet house. “I can’t do this anymore.”

“Can’t do this anymore?” I repeated dumbly. “Like, can’t do the relationship thing anymore? Or the fighting thing? Or just the Stiles thing?”

“I can’t watch you ruin your life over me,” Derek said. “I’ve watched you ostracize yourself, give up on things you love, and now I’ve watched you get hurt, all because you’re with me. I know that at school you live in your little Liberal Arts, Social Justice bubble, but there are fucked out people out there, Stiles. People who will hate you just for being with me. People who won’t stop when I threaten them with a lawyer.”

“And you’re just realizing this? You think I didn’t know that when I got called a Furry all through Senior Year? Or when my best friend got shipped off to a different school because some rogue Alpha took a chunk out of him against his will? How about the fact that I went from an A+ to a C- in Communications 1020 last semester after I presented about werewolf tagging in Greece? I have been dealing with bigoted assholes for years, Derek, and it doesn’t bother me anymore now than it did back then.” I reached across the table to grab Derek’s hand. “I _love_ you, Derek, and even if you leave right now and don’t come back I will never stop fighting for you.”

Derek’s eyes were bright as he threaded his fingers through mine. “I can’t lose you, Stiles. You’re all I have left.”

“So what, you think that taking off is the best way to keep me?” Anger welled up, threatening to overcome the sadness. The urge to rip, to tear at the most vulnerable pieces of Derek was overwhelming. Maybe he wasn’t wrong to want to leave me. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” I said. “You’re a fucking moron.”  

Derek didn’t even flinch. _Probably because he thinks it’s true_ , I thought, my anger dissipating as quickly as it came. “You deserve someone who improves your life by being a part of it,” Derek said sadly, “and that person isn’t me.”

“Bullshit.” I stood, knocking Derek’s keys and bag off the table as I moved toward him. “You’re the best thing in my life. If you leave Derek, so help me God, I will follow you. I will drive that Jeep into the ground looking for you.”

“Don’t tempt me,” Derek said, his lips twitching as if to smile.

“Hey, fuck you, my Jeep is beautiful, and she’ll be around for a long, long time.” I pushed his chair out and sat right in his lap, hooking my ankles around his legs. “Just like me.”

I pressed my lips right below his ear, feeling him shudder and knowing that I had won, at least for now. “You’re not getting rid of me Derek, not that easily.”

Derek’s arms circled around me, squeezing tightly. “I just want you to take care of yourself. I want you to be safe.” He took a deep breath before continuing. “I know that this stuff is important to you, for all kinds of reasons, but I hate watching you throw yourself into danger without any thought about the consequences.”

“I think about what the consequences will be if I don’t do this,” I whispered quietly. “You’re not the only one who’s scared to lose the person he loves.”

Derek pressed his hand to my face, leeching the pain from my swollen eye. His touch was gentle and familiar and not nearly enough. I had so much pent up energy from the protest and our fight and just from everything; back then I was a perpetual ball of frustration and anxiety, and just as much as I was his, Derek was my anchor. “Kiss me,” I pleaded, pushing myself back onto the table and pulling him down on top of me. “Kiss me like you mean it. Kiss me like you’ll never leave.”

Derek obliged, kissing me hard and fast and with complete desperation. He lifted me from the table and slammed himself backward against the wall, making sure his grip on my back never faltered. I had always been amazed at his strength, but as he kissed and bit and nuzzled my neck, I realized that maybe I hadn’t really ever considered how much it would falter without me.

\--

_After a week or so Kate decides that I need a little…motivation to work faster. It seems that if I refuse to write any intimate details, then I need to get to the names, dates, and locations piece of my little tell-all ASAP._

_“I’m trying to tell you, Pete,” I say, waiting for enough feeling to come back to my fingers so that I can type again. “I need to set a scene. No one likes a poorly-fleshed out villain.”_

_Pete grunts, but I saw his Marvel t-shirt yesterday; I know he gets it. “People don’t care about origin stories, kid,” he says. “They care about making someone pay.”_

_“And that’s what I’m here for? To be the media’s scapegoat?”_

_He shrugs and then flicks his hand, signaling for me to start typing again._

_“Motivation is key,” I mutter under my breath. I’ve seen terrible things carried out under my orders – I’ve done terrible things that I wish I could forget – but don’t ever let it be said that I was lacking proper motivation._

** January 2014 **

The night that the Werewolf Segregation Act was introduced Derek and I were out for drinks with some members of Berkeley’s Human Lycan Alliance. I was on my way to well and truly drunk, and Derek, who had snuck in some wolfsbane, was more than a little tipsy. I had spent the first half of the night vacillating between arguing with Kieran (the organizer of the protest that had almost sent Derek packing and thusly cementing him as Bane of our Relationship) over foreign policy and making out with Derek in various dark corners of the pub.

The political climate had been getting steadily worse for werewolves and their allies over the past three years, and though Derek was loath to talk about the issues with me, I knew that even he was starting to get worried. There had been revolts over most of Eastern Europe and werewolves were banned outright from multiple Asian countries. In the States political leaders had to be more subtle, with the threat of protestors and free media hanging over their heads, but there had been major pieces of legislation passed limiting werewolf rights under the guise of public safety. Everyone knew that the Werewolf Registration Act, which I had flown to D.C. to protest, (the fight was brutal, but the makeup sex was fantastic) was a harbinger of worse things to come, but even I didn’t expect it to happen so soon.

Kate Argent, in a political maneuver that proved to me it’s not what you know, but how psychotic you are that gets you ahead in life, managed to land a position as Senator in the most recent election. Derek had shut down the first time he saw her on the news; he just got up, walked out of the room, and wouldn’t come out for two days. Even though I’d gotten rid of the television after that, I saw enough of her icy smile plastered over the Internet to know that she was planning something big.

“Turn up the TV, Will,” Kieran called out to the bartender as the banner flashed a dangerous red along the scroll screen. Kieran was the only human in a pack of sixteen werewolves from Malibu. He was rich and entitled and talked with the lazy authority of a kid who had always been doted on, but he had enough money to fund most of the HLA’s activities and his heart was in the right place. And if Derek kissed me a little harder and hovered a little closer when we were all out together, then I could deal with that. It was definitely preferable to having him sit at home and stew and read angsty poetry in our bedroom.

The Political Correspondent was reporting live from D.C., and sitting there, in one of the last werewolf-friendly venues in a city which was supposed to be one of the most tolerant in the US, we all knew that everything was about to change. Kieran looked pale and nauseated, a stark contrast to his usual vibrant personality. Leila and her girlfriend Shelby were holding hands tightly under the table, their faces motionless, and Derek…Derek was watching the news with a morbid disgust. The voice droned on, and I only picked up snippets, _“In a surprising…Senator Katherine Argent…will permanently change the Human-Lycanathrope dynamics in the United States…”_ as I tried to stave off a panic attack.

Unsurprisingly, at the mention of Kate Derek went rigid, and I hastily threw some bills at the bar so that I could get him out of there as soon as possible. “Where the hell are you two going?” Kieran called out as we high-tailed it out of there.

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” I shouted over my shoulder, careful not to let Derek out of my sight. I was pretty sure that he wouldn’t change and leave me stranded in the middle of town, but when it came to Kate it was hard to tell.

We didn’t bother with a cab, mostly because I was afraid that we’d hear an interview and Derek would try to catapult himself out the window.

It was a cool night, but Derek kept a brutal pace; usually he had no trouble remembering that I had limitations, but he was determined to get as far away from that bar as possible. He didn’t speak the whole way home, and I knew better than to press him. When we finally arrived he shucked his boots and coat at the door, not even taking the time to put them away properly – something he’d be on my ass for on a regular day – and bolted toward the room. I ran after him, wheezing, sweaty, and arms and legs flailing as I tried to wriggle out of my coat and boots without losing time.

Thankfully, I managed to stumble to the door before he could lock himself in and get lost in a miasma of guilt and self-flagellation. “Derek,” I said, as I settled beside him in bed. He was curled up on his side with an arm thrown over his head. “Tell me what to do.”

Derek’s voice was hoarse. “Just don’t leave,” he whispered. “Please.”

I curled my arms around him and pulled his back toward my chest. “I’m not going anywhere,” I said, running a hand through his wind-tousled hair. “I’ll never leave you.”

At the time I hadn’t expected that to be a lie.

*

“Maybe it won’t pass,” I said a few hours later, when Derek had woken up in a cold sweat, the smell of fire in his nostrils and the ghost of Kate alive in our bedroom.

“It’ll pass.” Derek’s voice was emotionless, expressionless, and I was furious. He had lost so much: his mother and most of his pack in the fire; Laura, in a hate crime in New York last year; and now his freedom.

“What do you think will happen?” This was something I had discussed with the HLA at great length, but never with Derek.

“Interment camps? Compounds? The zoo?” He laughed bitterly and the sound made me want to curl him back into my chest where nothing could ever hurt him.

We lay there in silence for a minute, individually contemplating the repercussions of segregation, before I pulled Derek to face me. Under the moonlight he looked so fucking beautiful that my breath caught and I was blindsided by an all-encompassing rage. I was suddenly fucking furious that anyone – Kate, Congress, the knock-kneed old cock at the grocery store down the street – could look at Derek and think _monster._

“I want the bite,” I croaked, my throat burning from the effort of holding back tears.

“What.” Despite my tutelage Derek still hadn’t learned the importance of intonation.

“I want the bite,” I repeated, stronger this time. “If segregation is coming then I want to make sure that I end up with you. Bite me and I’ll report it as a rogue Alpha attack.”

“Absolutely not.” Derek looked horrified at the very thought, and for a second I felt like an idiot. A wave of cold, sharp fear sluiced through my veins as I contemplated the thought that maybe Derek didn’t _want_ me to be a werewolf.

Before I could voice the thought, Derek had me gathered in his arms, pressing warm kisses to my bare shoulder. “Whatever you’re thinking,” he whispered, “stop. You were right before, maybe it won’t pass.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but Derek cut me off again. “If I bite you, you’ll lose your scholarship. You’ll get kicked out of Berkeley and be forced to beg for a minimum wage job.”

“I don’t – ”

“Think of all the good you could do,” Derek said, pulling out the big guns. “With your degree, your brain, your ability to connect to people; you could make a real difference in all of this, Stiles. As a _human._ ”

I pressed my nose into Derek’s neck, breathing in the warm, clean smell of his skin, trying to commit it to memory. “If Segregation passes, they’ll take you away. I might never see you again.”

“The bite could kill you,” Derek replied. “Or leave you weak and defenseless and out of control with anger, just in time for the IPA to put you down like an animal.” He growled and I could feel the rumbling against my chest. “I won’t let that happen.”

I pulled him down for a kiss, soft and wet and slow. His hands ran gently through my hair and as he burrowed his head into the blankets, his nose against my throat, I wished that I could just make people understand that _this_ was what they were trying to destroy. Instead I just let my mind shut down as Derek fell asleep by degrees. I knew we’d continue this discussion another day, but in that minute I just wanted to pretend that we were like any other couple in love, happy and safe.

\-- 

_I don’t know if seeing her name finally make it into my report pissed Kate off, or if she was so pleased that she felt like spreading a little more terror and destruction, but when I wake up and get ready to type, a video has been uploaded and is ready to play._

_Though it makes me nearly sick with anxiety, I press the button and watch it play through. There’s a body in a cell, almost identical to the one they kept me in, and the body is strapped to a chair. Though the person’s head is covered with a black bag, I can tell exactly who it is: Garrett. He has the same tattoo as all the members of Scott’s pack: a smaller version of the Alpha’s own double band, etched midway up his calf._

_The video goes on for what seems like an unbearable amount of time, but Garrett is strong. Scott had been proud to call him his beta; he’d always been fair and brave and loyal, and that doesn’t change, not even in his final minutes._

_I know without being told that Scott sent him out to look for me, and that makes things even worse. I had thought that at least being caught meant that I was finished seeing people die on my behalf._

** April 2014 **

When something was really important to Derek, he hid it from me. It was sad and more than a little fucked up, but he had been through so much shit that he horded happiness like a squirrel with nuts, afraid that the universe would be there to strip him of anything good instantaneously. Conversely, the thought of his problems being worthwhile was so alien to him that he buried them beneath layers of denial. When one considered his inbred hatred of looking stupid and terminal feelings of inadequacy, it made sense that Derek and sharing weren’t exactly copacetic. They were more of a mortal enemies type deal. We’re talking like a Superman-Lex Luthor situation.

Sometimes the things he tried to hide were just funny, like say, the ear-scratching incident of 2009 or the fact that he’d slept with a stuffed animal until he was thirteen because _werewolves are tactile creatures, all right?_ Other times the things he hid made me infinitely sad and pissed off and generally done with the fucked up world we lived in, like when I came home to find him studiously following along the Yale online courses, taking chicken-scratch notes in one of my half-used notebooks. Once I found out what he’d been doing, I found a pile of them hidden in a Corn Pops box in our closet. I’d written countless angry letters about banning werewolf students from universities, but nothing I’d done had made any difference. Derek just shrugged as if it didn’t bother him and I continued to hurt whenever I saw his latest haul from the public library.

This time, though, things were different. Sure, Derek had been a surly little shit at ten and that had never changed, but he seemed to be retreating even further into himself. His usual rotation of boring, highbrow literature-with-a-capital-L was getting darker and darker and he hadn’t even made time for his shitty emo poetry lately. I found a pile of notebooks in the recycling bin one morning on my way to class and I came back from dinner with Kieran and the gang one night to find him rifling through his closet to find things to donate to the Good Will.

As those little incidents began to stack up, I started to seriously freak out. Sometimes even I forgot what a shitty hand Derek had been dealt; I gave him shit for grumping at me, I coerced him into socializing, and I made fun of him for his quirky habits. What if I was part of the problem? What if he needed a supportive boyfriend who kumbaya’d his way through feelings instead of a sarcastic asshole who still had a photoshopped picture of him from last Halloween labeled _Grumpkin Pumpkin_ superglued to his day planner?

I worked myself up so much that when I came home one day to find him consolidating his bank accounts I completely broke down. He barely had time to ask what was wrong before I was flinging myself at him, gasping in huge gulps of air.

“Stiles, what’s wrong? Stiles, come on, breathe. You have to breathe and tell me what’s going on.” He looked anxious and tired; his sharp jawline was accentuated by nights with little sleep and nothing to eat.

“Are you – ” I gasped, feeling dizzy as I slumped against the arm of the sofa.

“Am I what? Stiles, baby, please –“

I tried to laugh, but ended up wheezing in another noisy breath instead. Disgusted with myself, I rolled away from Derek. There I was, freaking out when I should have been trying to figure out what the hell was wrong with my boyfriend. Derek needed me, and instead I came home and freaked him out enough to use a pet name. A _pet name._ Pet names are something that should never come out of Derek Hale’s mouth. Derek and pet names are like a talking puppy: cute in theory, but wrong and disturbing in reality.

When I could finally breathe again, I tried to lift myself on wobbly legs. Derek, through the use of excessive eyebrow raising, told me how piss-poor that plan was, and took a seat beside me on the floor.

“Wanna tell me what that was about?” he asked, dragging my foot into his lap.

“Wanna tell me if you’re planning to kill yourself?” I countered, unable to stop the verbal diarrhea. Well, at least I knew that Derek didn’t love me for my incredible tact.

“Kill myself?” Derek repeated dumbly. I could have cried with relief at the look of complete confusion on his face.

“Scott had a cousin,” I said slowly. “Mya. She started giving away all her things, stopped going to her dance classes, and then…” I trailed off, sure that Derek knew where the story was going.

“Stiles, I’m. I don’t think.” He huffed, rubbing my foot as he squinted in frustration. “I would never do that,” he settled on.

“Then what _are_ you doing?”

Derek didn’t answer, but I could feel in the way that he touched me – too gently, too carefully – that he knew he couldn’t lie his way out of this.

“You can either tell me, or I can figure it out on my own and be supremely pissed off that you hid it from me.”

“You’re an annoying little shit, you know that?” Derek said, starting in on the other foot.

“Maybe, but you kick your leg like a dog in your sleep, so I guess none of us are perfect, now are we?”

Derek growled, but he didn’t let go of my foot. He also didn’t answer my question.

“Derek, I’m really worried.”

Derek sighed, and placed my foot gently on the floor. He drew his legs up to his chest and looked straight at the wall. Avoiding eye contact meant that whatever he was hiding was big. “There’s this woman,” he said, his face twisting into a guilty grimace.

And on a list of Top Ten Things I Wasn’t Expecting to Hear that falls somewhere between “I’ve been thinking we should invite Kieran for a threesome” and “Would you run away with me to become a Rodeo clown”. Sure, there have been girls before: a girl named Paige, who was actually pretty sweet aside from the fact that she treated me like Derek’s silly younger brother, and of course, the infamous Kate. There had been guys too, but Derek hadn’t told me their names and I really didn’t want to know. But still, I thought that we were a done deal. Our relationship was the one thing that I never had to feel insecure about. In every horrible scenario I had envisioned, none of them involved this; none of them involved Derek leaving _me._

“A woman?” I echoed back. My heart jackrabbited in my chest as I contemplated the various paths this conversation could take from here, and Derek’s eyes widened dramatically.

“Not like that!” He scooted up the floor to press a kiss to my sweaty forehead. “Jesus, Stiles, never like that.” He drew back slowly, taking my hand with him this time. There’s a woman, an Alpha, – Satomi is her name – who was friends with my mother. She’s old, and a bitten Were, but very powerful. She has a lot of influential friends and a large pack.”

A large pack meant strength, I knew that. Everyone knew that. It was one of the reasons the IPA had banned the biting of humans all those years ago. My chest squeezed, wondering what a powerful Alpha could want with Derek. A union was off the table – Alpha mated pairs didn’t work well, and Derek said that this Satomi woman was old – but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t try to take him in as a part of her pack. It wasn’t unheard of for young, inexperienced Alphas to mentor under someone wiser, especially in situations like Derek’s. Plus, he did say that she was an old friend of the family.

“What did she want?” I managed to keep my voice from shaking, not that it mattered when Derek could probably smell my anxiety as clearly as the day-old chaat masala in the fridge.

“She told me a date,” Derek said slowly. “A date that she had picked up from one of her contacts in Washington.”

Suddenly, I wanted there to be a woman. Another man. A slew of paramours, all vying for Derek’s affection with feats of strength and supernatural beauty that I wouldn’t be able to touch. I wanted him to be bored of me, tired of our routine, ready to take off around the world; anything other than the truth. If Derek were cheating on me, at least that would be something to work through. At least if he wanted to leave he would still have a place in the world, and I would know he was all right. At least he wouldn’t be rounded up like an animal. “When?” I whispered.

“The full moon,” Derek said.

“The full moon?” I felt the sinking, cloying feeling of despair rising up and I wished I were one of those people who could just faint after getting bad news. I wanted to let everything go. But no, instead my brain had to sift, had to process, had to think of every possible angle. “That’s three days, Derek.” I took a moment to breathe, to think about how long Derek had been acting strangely.

“How long have you known?” I asked, unsure if I really wanted to hear the answer.

“A few weeks,” he said, not meeting my eyes. A pause, and then, “maybe a month or so.”

I was stunned into silence. I did know whether to laugh or cry, rage or stew, fight back or just give in. I already knew Derek’s reasons for keeping this from me; he already knew my reasons for being upset. This was a classic argument come to life. This was our worst-case scenario being played out in real time. I felt hollow and empty, void of ideas. There was only one thing left to be done, and there was no way that I was letting Derek out of it this time. Time was of the essence.

“You’ll bite me tonight,” I said, firmly and without room for interpretation. I steeled myself for Derek’s protests.

“Absolutely not.” Derek got up from the floor; he had always been unable to talk through things rationally. Unlike me, the person in perpetual movement, he’d never been able to settle conflict quietly. He always jumped into half-assed plans and barreled forward with little to no foresight. Playing chess with him was a fucking gong show, especially since he hated to lose, and that added pressure made him play even worse.

“Okay, fine.” I got up from the floor and made my way toward the bedroom.

“Fine?” Derek overtook me in two steps. “What do you mean, fine?”

“I mean fine, Derek. You read a lot, I’m pretty sure you can puzzle that one out.”

I blew past him and into the bedroom, grabbed a backpack from the closet, and started throwing things inside.

“Where are you going?”

“Malibu.”

“Mali–” I could see the second it clicked for Derek, and could hear the slight lisp that after all this time he still couldn’t get rid of when his canines fully extended. “Kieran’s pack. What makes you think they’ll bite you?”

“We’ve talked about it before.”

Derek’s growl was low and dangerous. “They wouldn’t dare,” he said. “Not with you smelling like another wolf’s –”

“Another wolf’s what, Derek?” I asked coldly. “Another wolf’s _mate_?” I snorted, and a part of me felt happy – felt _vindicated_ – when Derek flinched. “Another wolf’s _property_?”

Derek’s claws extended, biting into his hands. Usually I would be right there to steady him, but I didn’t have time. If Derek was seriously going to refuse to bite me, I would make it happen another way. “Will you really go to them?” he asked, the fight gone from his voice.

I swallowed, knowing that this was going to hurt him and knowing that I needed to say it anyway. “I will.”

When Derek didn’t answer, I stepped toward him, ready to make my final case. “If I don’t get the bite, will you hide?” I forced him to look straight at me, knowing he wouldn’t be able to lie. I was lacking in supernatural juju, but my Derek Hale interpretation skills were top notch. “Will you stay away from those psychotic assholes, keep yourself safe?”

“You know I can’t,” Derek replied. “They’ll think that you – ”

“Had something to do with it,” I finished. “So why are you allowed to sacrifice your freedom to keep me safe, but I’m not allowed to do the same for you?”

“You won’t be keeping me safe!” Derek growled. “You’ll just be putting yourself at risk.”

I took my fingers and threaded them through Derek’s, thinking of how lost we’d be without each other. We’d lost two mothers and an entire pack together. We kept one another afloat. Who knows what kind of people we would have become on our own. “I’ll be keeping us together,” I said. “And that’s pretty much the same thing,”     

 

    

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	3. Interlude I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Stiles was the planner. Stiles was the motivator. Stiles was everything, and now he’s gone._

\--

Even though he knows they’re trying to be quiet, Derek can hear the soft footsteps of his pack members outside his room. He knows he should leave, report to Scott, set things in motion. He knows he should find Logan, Erica, and Boyd and be a proper alpha, a proper family member. He knows he should be calm and collected and continue on with things as Stiles planned. But he honestly doesn’t know how. Stiles was the planner. Stiles was the motivator. Stiles was everything, and now he’s gone.

\--

Unlike so many before him, Scott doesn’t pause outside his door. Instead, the alpha barges straight in, his jaw set in a determined line. “It’s been weeks, Derek,” he says, his eyes flashing. “We need you back.”

Derek growls – his instincts get the better of him so much quicker without Stiles around to ease his temper – but he does slowly make his way out of bed. He grabs a water bottle – it’s old, but he’s suddenly _parched_ – and brings it to his lips.

“What do you want, Scott?” He’s surprised to find that his voice sounds level, even though his entire worldview has tilted.

“What I want is for you to take some responsibility,” Scott says. Derek squints at him, trying to remember the scared, naïve teenager Stiles had first introduced him to, and failing. “I know that Stiles –”

“Don’t,” Derek grits out. His control is tenuous and it takes everything he has to keep calm. “Don’t talk about what he would have wanted. You don’t –”

“I don’t what?” Scott’s eyes are red and Derek nearly buckles under the weight of his stare. It’s at times like this, when his indomitable will shines through, that Derek sees his mother in Scott. He was never supposed to be an alpha, that was Laura’s mantel, but Scott – Scott was born to be an alpha.

Instead of snarling and posturing, instead of throwing his own past grief in Derek’s face, Scott just reaches out a hand and rests it on Derek’s shoulder. The gesture is supportive, non-threatening, and Derek is suddenly exhausted. “I don’t know if I can,” he chokes out.

“We heard from Danny this morning, Derek.” Scott won’t look at him, and Derek’s stomach lurches.

“Stiles?” He knows Stiles is alive – he can _feel_ him – but he knows that whatever Danny has managed to smuggle through isn’t good.

“I think you should come to the Den,” Scott says.

\--

The Den, so named by Stiles after they started having regular meetings there, is a really just a large conference room. There are chairs, picked out by Stiles and Scott for their “lounging capabilities”, and a large fridge that Stiles kept regularly stocked. There are notes and bulletin boards full of photos and different colored strings, and the room just _reeks_ of Stiles in the figurative and literal senses. There’s a reason he’s been avoiding coming here.

He doesn’t meet anybody’s eyes, though he can see that Erica is only being kept back by the pressure of Boyd’s hand on her arm. Scott has his laptop out and is fiddling around with something – obviously whatever Danny’s been able to send through.

“Let’s get this over with,” Derek says as soon as Scott looks up. He takes the remaining seat at the head of the table and waits for everyone else to settle into place.

“Derek,” Erica starts, but falls silent without any help from Boyd when she sees the look on his face. He can feel her distress through their bond, but he just can’t bring himself to comfort her. He knows that Stiles would want him to pull himself together, but he barely has enough energy to keep himself going, and whatever extra he has is expended with Logan. They’ve been working on controlling his shift, and with Stiles missing it hasn’t been easy.

No one really knows how to start; Stiles is usually the one running these meetings and his absence causes a palpable sense of discomfort.

“All right, everyone.” Scott, as usual, is the one to step up. “I know it’s been quiet for a couple of weeks, but we’ve finally received some intel from Danny.”

Erica whimpers, and while the sound makes Scott flinch he continues without pause. “Bad news first I guess. The team that we sent in was taken out.”

The news is no less jarring for all that it was expected. Reconnaissance teams don’t have a high success rate in Argent territory, and it’s been weeks since they’ve heard anything, but the loss of pack is always deeply felt. Garrett, Rachel, and Ryan, who were all members of Scott’s pack – he’d insisted, since the scouting team that had been immobilized when Stiles was taken was comprised of members of Derek’s pack – were good wolves. They were strong and loyal and they died trying to bring Stiles back. They sacrificed their lives and all Derek can dwell on is the fact that they failed. He wonders if it should bother him that this failure bothers him more than the loss of life. Maybe, he decides, but it’s not like the news surprises him; there are very few people he wouldn’t sacrifice to bring Stiles back.

“Stiles is alive,” Scott continues. Some of the weres look relieved, but this is information that Derek already had. What he wants to know is how badly they’ve hurt him. Scott glances over at Derek before continuing. “Danny says he’s in rough shape, but he’s out of solitary. He –” Scott pauses, and Derek rumbles, low and deep. Scott pulled him out for this; he better buck the fuck up and continue what he started.  

“He’s been out for a few days.”

The snarl erupts from Derek’s chest before he can do anything to rein it in. Almost as quickly there’s a crash as Erica flings Boyd backward and barrels into him, tears staining her cheeks and her hair in his face. Instead of pushing her away he just basks in the scent and comfort of pack, lets it keep him steady.

_A few days._ That means that Stiles didn’t talk for _weeks._ They – _Kate_ , he thinks with a rush of malice – had him for weeks at her disposal. He was tortured for endless hours, even though they’d agreed that they wouldn’t push themselves too far if caught. Derek should have known better. Stiles has always been a self-sacrificing idiot.

As Scott’s words truly sink in, his mind conjures up a million different scenarios, a million different ways Stiles could be hurting, and he knows he’ll never forgive himself for letting that psychotic bitch go when he’d had the chance to rip out her throat. Everything that she’s done to Stiles – everything she’s done in this _war_ – is his fault. Stiles probably won’t see it that way – _if he even survives to talk about it at all –_ but he’s always been stupid when it comes to Derek.

“We’ve already moved the main bases,” Scott continues, letting Derek and Erica have their moment. “Stiles will have told them about the second and third lines by now, and those recruits are ready to defend.”

He brings up a document, but doesn’t turn on the projector. “This is a confession,” Scott says, his own eyes glowing now. “Danny said that Kate has Stiles writing out some kind of record of his crimes, and well, it’s Stiles so…”

_So it’s going to be about a thousand pages long,_ Derek thinks wryly. He smiles, maybe for the first time in days, and Erica lets out a small huff of laughter beside him.

“Only Stiles could get taken by hunters and have a laptop and full permission to write a memoir,” Boyd says gruffly. There’s a low rumbling of laughter around the room, and even though they’re no closer to getting him out, Derek’s chest warms at the thought of his mate’s perseverance.

“Danny has set it up so that as long as Stiles keeps saving, we’ll keep receiving the updates. That way, we’ll know which areas are most vulnerable.” He turns to Derek. “You’ll be in charge, Derek. Some of the stuff is – uh – kind of personal.”

Derek nods and looks up at Scott for permission to leave. He knows that there are plans to make, but this has been emotionally draining enough for one day.

“You’ll be back tomorrow,” Scott says as he waves him out the door.  

It isn’t a question, but Derek nods anyway.

It’s time to figure out a way to get Stiles back.

\--

 

 

 

 

 

 


	4. Pack

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pete rolls his eyes, and the gesture is so familiar, so quintessentially Derek, that for a second I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe, I can’t think and it hurts. It hurts so much more than anything else he’s done to me today. It hurts in a way he’ll never be able to replicate, because pain like that transcends the physical. Human or werewolf, that’s the kind of pain that never heals.

**April 2014**

It took half a day to get everything together: Derek had bought something with his credit card right around the street corner fifteen minutes beforehand to establish that he had been in town, and he had a dinner reservation with Leila and Shelby for eight o’clock; my father was waiting a half an hour outside town limits to pick me up, despite the fact that he was so furious he hung up on me as soon as I told him what was going on; and I had booked a campsite in Beacon Hills that I was going to use to write my final paper for Cultural Anthropology. Plans were in place. Derek was pacing around the house lamenting his general existence, and I was obsessing over last-minute details. In other words, business as usual. 

The giving of the bite itself was stiff and overly formal. At first we couldn’t figure out how to move or where to do it, and I ended up draped dramatically across the bed, half-naked and feeling ridiculous. Derek wasn’t making it any easier, with his sad eyes and air of general unease.

“I’ve never bitten someone before,” he kept repeating, as if that helpful tidbit of information was supposed to soothe me in some way. 

“It’ll be like a sexy bite, just with a little more oomph,” I said, trying my best to get him to calm the fuck down. He was nearly vibrating with tension, and I knew I couldn’t to send him out to dinner strung out and discombobulated; Leila and Shelby would have been suspicious, and that was the last thing we wanted. 

Derek pulled a sour face before settling back into his background-level scowl. “Yes, Stiles,” he snipped. “There’s nothing sexier than four inch long fangs that may or may not end up killing you. Why didn’t we bring this to the bedroom sooner? It could have really helped me last year when you went through that Centre Stage obsession.” 

“Fuck you, Zoe Saldana is a Goddess. Plus, picturing you in a ballet leotard has helped me get through some long nights.”

Though I knew it must have physically pained him to do so, Derek smiled. Just the slightest twitch of his lips, and he shoved me while doing it, but that – that – beautiful twitch was the reason I was spread across the bed like some harlequin love interest, ready to be devoured. “Stiles,” he said softly, cupping my cheek with a warm hand. 

I grabbed his wrist and brought it forward for a quick kiss. My mouth felt suddenly dry and my hands were unsteady. “Where do you want to do it?” I asked, swallowing heavily. 

“You could die.” Derek’s voice sounded so small, so lost, but we had already been through this; he had already made his decision. 

“Listen,” I said, pulling him down beside me. “I know you believe in all that werewolf-mate mumbo-jumbo, so if you really think that this is it for you – if you really believe that I’m it for you – there’s nothing to worry about. I’ll turn, and we’ll still be together.” 

“I,” Derek started, clearly torn. “But you don’t believe in that,” he decided on.

“I believe in you,” I said, drawing Derek down to my hip. “Always have, always will.” 

*

“It really itches,” I complained to my dad an hour later, breaking the wall of silence that had rested between us ever since he picked me up. “Like a burny-type itch.”

He looked at me, distinctly unimpressed. 

“You know, if you’re worried that this is going to kill me, then you should be nicer to me in my final hours.” 

My head rocketed forward as my Father slammed on the brakes. The car behind us passed by with a blaring horn and “fuck you, asshole!” that my dad barely seemed to register. 

Instead, he turned and pointed his finger directly in my face. “You are not going to die, Stiles.” 

It sounded more like an order than a statement of fact, and though I knew I would have made the same decision fifty, a hundred times in a row, that didn’t really temper the raging ocean of guilt at seeing my dad so upset.

“Dad, I-”

“Listen, kid,” he said, pulling me forward into a seatbelted half-hug. “You’ve been looking at Derek the same way since you were six years old, and I’m not an idiot. It’s just, do you know how hard things are going to be for you now?” 

I nodded, trying to swallow past the lump in my throat. “I – I love you, Dad.”

“You’re a menace,” he replied, pulling back into traffic. “But you’re a good kid. And I love you too.” 

*

Two hours later I was settled into my campsite with my side feeling like it had been lit on fire and an 8-inch knife resting in my hand. 

It has to look real, I had insisted, lying next to Derek on our bed. This was the part of the plan that failed to convince him: making it look like I was bitten by a rogue Alpha. 

A shallow bite, we had decided. A shallow bite, that was lengthened, stretched, pitted out. A shallow bite that I would continue. Part Derek, part Stiles. Supernatural and steel. This bite, this decision was a part of both of us, and it took both of us to make it happen. 

Still, it was totally different planning to ram a knife into your side and actually doing it. 

It took an embarrassing amount of time to actually go through with it. I checked to make sure my dad was on speed dial about forty times, sent Derek no fewer than ten sappy text messages, and edited my Anthro paper twice before I finally decided enough was enough. 

There was none of the gentleness I had felt with the bite. Derek’s breath, soft against my side, was missing. There was only pain, then blood, then me, running as far as I could manage while dialing my dad’s number. 

And, as planned, there was no answer, so I left my panicked message with the Sheriff’s station. 

Unfortunately, even the best-laid plans can fall quickly to shit. 

*

“Derek did this to you!” My father’s screams echoed through the entire Sheriff’s Department. At every desk deputies pretended to work while they surreptitiously snuck glances every three or four seconds. If I had known how well my father had managed to teach them subtlety, maybe I wouldn’t have hinged so much of my plan on him. 

“It wasn’t Derek,” I croaked. “He’s home – he’s been home all night.”

“Bullshit,” my dad spat, slamming his phone. He’d already called Derek cell at least ten times, and he’d sent one of his deputies to the house to see if he was there. 

Though we’d talked it through only a few hours before, even I had a hard time believing that my dad didn’t want to kill Derek. His face was purple, breaths coming in short, chopped off puffs. Deputy Parrish was throwing over worried glances every ten seconds, not even stopping when my dad caught him and barked out an order for everyone to _do their damn jobs and find out who did this._

I’d just finished giving my statement to Montoya, the leader of the department’s Werewolf Taskforce, when a silence fell over the station. Where minutes ago everyone had been in a flurry of action, hastily running around to carry out my dad’s orders, there was suddenly just a whir of the air conditioner and the sharp click of stilettos hitting the ancient tiles.

Despite the heat that was flaring from the bite, licking along my spine with every heartbeat, I felt chilled. I barely heard Montoya as she outlined a plan, and by the time my dad appeared in the doorway, his face pinched and looking defeated, I knew that everything had been ruined. 

 

\--

_Things have been quiet around the compound, and it’s making me nervous. It’s been four, maybe five days since Kate has shown her face, and it’s taking every ounce of my control to keep from antagonizing dumb and dumber in the hope that she’ll show herself. Logically, I know that I shouldn’t want her to come back because more Kate usually means more pain, but whatever is keeping her away from me cannot be good. At least when she’s with me, I know she’s not with Derek. I can’t do much for him anymore, but at least I can do this. She wants a plaything – someone to fulfill that twisted part of her? I’m happy to oblige. It’s the least I can do, considering that everything that Derek has done, every crime he has committed, has been because of me._

\--

I could hear them arguing from my spot in the back of Agent Miraz’s car. My dad, nearly hysterical and trying to hide it, kept pulling the Sherriff card, and Montoya just kept calmly repeating that this was her jurisdiction. I bit my lip and tried not to think about how the hurried hug across his desk might be the last contact I ever had with my dad. 

Unfortunately, neither of them seemed to be getting anywhere. Agent Miraz was Federal, much higher up than anyone in my dad’s department, and answered to Senator Argent herself. There was no way they were going to get me back; I knew better than anyone that Kate Argent always got what she wanted. 

I shivered, wondering where they were going to take me. Selfishly, I wondered if it would be too far for Derek to find. I tried to quash that hope before it could fully bloom; coming after me would be a suicide mission. 

Wanting some comfort, I focused on the bond until I could feel Derek. The feeling was warm and solid in my chest. It was grounding. It was pack. I smiled, happy that at least this much had gone right. Even if he couldn’t get me back, at least Derek wouldn’t have to live with having killed me himself. I knew he must be going insane with worry, but he couldn’t risk contacting me. My leg jiggled as I thought of what was happening with him. We had a plan for this – well, it was more of an _if you die sort of scenario_ , but _captured by Argents_ worked just as well. I knew Derek wouldn’t want to leave me behind, but he’d promised. He’d sworn that if things didn’t go as planned, then he would go into hiding with Satomi and the other rebels. He wouldn’t do either of us any good trapped in an internment camp. And well, I didn’t want to think what would happen to me if he got himself killed. 

For hours I sat in the back of that dirty car, sick with worry and pain, just thinking of Derek. Every minute I thought of a new detail I must have forgotten, a new way for them to find out that he had bitten me. A new way for me to be his downfall. 

It was a relief when the pain finally became too much, and I collapsed against the cool, tinted glass of the cruiser’s window.

*

**April 2014**

I was a little surprised when we arrived at the facility and Kate didn’t show up to interrogate me herself. I figured, knowing the sick fascination she had with Derek, that she would be first in line. Instead, the proceedings were carried out by one of the younger Argents – Allison, she’d said – and were surprising civil. She was smart, but fair, and didn’t push when I insisted that Derek had nothing to do with the bite. I actually felt a little sorry that I couldn’t give her the answers she needed; it looked like this was some sort of initiation for her, and if the smell of her sweat was anything to go by, she was seriously fucking it up. 

When Allison was finished, they hauled me off to a reinforced cell – for my own protection, they’d insisted – and locked me in. In the past, official protocol had been that newly bitten werewolves were assigned an Alpha who would help them through their first few moons. All day I had been panicked that they were going to find me a new Alpha, effectively cutting off my bond with Derek, but as the hours stretched forward it seemed more likely that they were just going to leave me in the basement to figure things out for myself. They had probably wanted me to rip myself to pieces and save them the trouble. 

Thankfully, things never got that far. 

*

When it happened, my rescue mission was two things: anticlimactic and successful, meaning that Derek obviously had nothing to do with planning it. I’m pretty sure that his entire strategy would have been limited to “sniff out Stiles” and “rip out throats”. He would have gotten himself thrown right into an adjoining cell, leaving me to find a way out for the both of us. 

As it turned out, Satomi had several contacts inside the Argents’ organization, and it was as simple as calling in a favor. Knowing Derek as she did, Kate must have expected the kind of dramatic rescue scenario I had been envisioning, and was probably pretty fucking pissed off when I disappeared without a trace. 

I was stuffed in the back of an armored van and shackled at the wrists and ankles. None of my so-called rescuers were particularly chatty, but for once I was too worried about Derek to get caught up in conversation. Instead, I tried to focus on the bond and ignore the pull of the moon. Though Derek had explained what it felt like a million times, nothing could have prepared me for the pure, primal sensation. It was intoxicating, and as the minutes ticked by, my control slipped further. 

It took all my effort to stay calm. My nails lengthened on and off, and I snarled whenever we hit a bump, but for a first shift it was pretty boring. I had seen feral weres, out of their minds with pain and fear, rip family members apart. 

Maybe it was because I had forewarning, or maybe it was because I was so focused on being reunited with Derek, or maybe it was because for the first time in my life my mind was impossibly, blessedly quiet, but whatever the reason, I seemed to be a natural at being a werewolf. 

It was a little past midnight when we finally caught up with Derek. I could smell him – sense him – in a way I had never experienced, and it provided a counterpoint to the pull of the moon. 

Once he barreled through the car’s door and fell down at my knees, the tension I was carrying just snapped. Instead of afraid, I felt calm. Instead of the dizzying urge to run, I wanted to stay rooted in place, right next to Derek. 

He was my anchor, just as I was his. 

\--

_“I’m wounded,” I gasp as Pete wanders over to the table to switch out his brass knuckles. He grunts, and I take it as a sign that he’s listening._

_“Figuratively,” I clarifty. “I’m wounded figuratively.”_

_He raises his eyebrow as a trickle of blood drips down my face. I have to pause for a few seconds – being suspended from the ceiling doesn’t do wonders for your diaphragm, werewolf healing or not – before continuing._

_“I figured that this would at least warrant a visit from the Boss-Lady herself.”_

_“She’s busy,” Pete replies, picking up several instruments and then setting them down. He sighs, exasperated. Torturing someone can be quite tedious, I suppose. “Too busy to read thirty thousand words on the finer points of outdoor plumbing.”_

_I grin, even though it hurts, and it’ll probably just earn me a couple more hours in here. “She said she wanted to know everything about the camp.”_

_Pete rolls his eyes, and the gesture is so familiar, so quintessentially Derek, that for a second I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe, I can’t think and it hurts. It hurts so much more than anything else he’s done to me today. It hurts in a way he’ll never be able to replicate, because pain like that transcends the physical. Human or werewolf, that’s the kind of pain that never heals._

\--

**June 2014**

It took a few weeks to settle into the camp. With so many werewolves in such a small area, it was actually a miracle that things ran as smoothly as they did. It was desperation and sheer force of will that kept us from ripping one another to pieces. That being said, it still took several teeth-baring, eye-flashing arguments to convince Derek that I didn’t need a personal escort to walk to meal hall or use the goddamn bathroom. 

Sometimes it’s a real fucking treat when your Alpha is also your boyfriend. 

Still I guess all of Derek’s posturing did have a point, considering that the first time I wandered outside the perimeter I ended up cornered by a heavily armed Chris Argent. 

*

I was shifted and ready to attack before I realized that Chris had thrown his crossbow to the ground. Surprise is probably the only thing that kept me back – surprise, and a hefty dose of suspicion. Though I knew that he hadn’t personally helped carry out the destruction of Derek’s family, he was still an Argent, still a hunter. He still sheltered his psychopath of a sister, invited her to family dinners and supported her campaigns. He still passed her the goddamn pudding at Christmas dinner while Derek and I spent the day sitting amongst the rubble of the Hale house, talking about what his siblings would have wanted, the people they would have become by now. 

Whether it was right or not, fair or not, I still hated him for everything his family had done. 

I knew that Derek would want Chris alive, and my instincts to protect my boyfriend were warring with my instincts to defer to my Alpha; I could barely suppress a whine of frustration. Never as a human had I found making decisions to be so complicated, so impossible. Before I could demand an explanation, however, Chris made my decision for me. He dropped to the ground along with his weapon, and the knees of his tattered jeans sunk into the loamy soil. His face, when he finally looked up, was haggard: eyes dull, cheeks sunken, skin pale. His voice, when he finally spoke, was hoarse and laced with pain. “Please,” he choked, looking for all the world like someone prepared to sell his soul to the devil. “Please, I need your help.”

And that’s all it took: the barest sliver of empathy. Giving someone five seconds to talk about his pain changed the fabric of my entire world. 

*

By the time I got within half a mile of camp, Derek was already half-feral, running circles around the perimeter, his eyes bleeding red in the dim light. 

He managed to force out a quick Stiles before knocking me to the ground. He was shaking – great, shuddering movements that I couldn’t control, even as I wrapped my arms around him. 

“Derek,” I whispered in response, tilting my neck so that he could suck in great, greedy gulps of my scent. I didn’t need to be a werewolf to tell that he was terrified – his every motion betrayed it. Unfortunately, Derek had never done well with terrified. He was the worst at handling terrified, and if I hadn’t spent the past decade and a half of my life learning his every nuance, I may not have been able to stop him from charging back into the woods after Chris. His snarl of Argent was barely recognizable, and I clamped my hands around his neck in supplication before he could fully shift. 

“What did they do to you?” he snarled, eyes flashing. “How did you get away? Are you hurt?” His hands traced out frantic patterns along my back, arms, neck, until he seemed satisfied that I was in one piece. 

“He,” I corrected quietly, steeling myself for the argument I knew was about to come. “Chris was alone, and we – ” I hesitated, unsure of how to proceed. Unsure of how I was supposed to expect Derek to trust anything from an Argent, and sure that this conversation was going to be like a knife to his heart. 

“You what, Stiles?” Derek’s voice was eerily calm, and I found myself once again warring with a confused jumble of instincts: submission, defiance, the urge to protect. 

“We talked.” I took a step toward Derek despite the warning growl that rumbled up from his chest, and tried not to take it personally when he backed away. 

“You talked.” 

“He asked for my help.” 

“Your help.” 

“Yes, my help, Derek,” I snapped, pressing forward even as he recoiled. “He, he –” I tried to gulp in air, the phantom squeeze of unforgotten panic attacks looming in the back of my mind. “He has a son who’s sick. He’s two and has spent most of his life in the hospital.” I swallowed the bile that threatened to rise, and tried to banish the sound of beeping monitors. Knowing that they weren’t real didn’t make it any easier. “He asked – he wanted, well, not wanted, but he asked –”

“For the bite,” Derek finished. 

“Yup.”

“And you didn’t think that was a bit _odd_ ,” Derek snarls. “That Chris Argent – Chris _fucking_ Argent got caught wandering around our perimeter, putting everything we’ve worked for at stake, and the best he could come up with was some fucking fantasy about giving his own child the bite? Jesus Stiles, I thought you were smarter than that. He thinks we’re _animals_.” 

“Derek you weren’t there,” I pressed, indignant. “I know what I heard and Chris –”

“Don’t say his name!” Derek roared, finally making me flinch. I edged backward, tripping over a branch, but Derek didn’t even notice. “You think I don’t know what it’s like to want to trust an Argent? Do you think I don’t know what it’s like to want to trust someone so badly that you put your entire fucking family at stake?” 

“That’s not –”

“Of course that’s what it is, Stiles!” 

“Derek, you weren’t there. He was alone, he had a clear shot and didn’t take it, he knew exactly how to get here because someone on the outside helped him.” I was shaking myself at this point, ashamed at putting Derek through this much pain, but needing to make him understand how important this child suddenly was to me. I stepped forward and rested my forehead against his chest. 

“Please Derek,” I whispered, “Please don’t ask me to give up on this.”

His hands tightened around my waist. “Is this about a baby?” he whispered. I knew how conflicted his own views on family and pack had become since the fire, and in all honesty, I had always pictured us with a couple of kids running around, scowling at passersby with Derek’s eyebrows on their little faces, but that’s not what this was about. I had given up on that dream when I chose this life. I had given up on the kids and the white picket fence and the early morning coffees while doing the crossword to fight alongside Derek, and I didn’t regret it for a minute. This was about fairness, and justice, and not letting a little boy rot away when there was something I could _do_ about it.

“It’s not about the baby,” I said, knowing that Derek was listening carefully for a lie. “Derek, I just – I just _can’t_. I can let this little boy die like my mom.” 

Derek edged back, using the tiny space between us to tilt my head up. He carefully brushed the tears away before leaning down for a soft kiss. “Stiles,” he breathed, and my heart clenched at the raw emotion. 

“I’ll go alone,” I said softly. “The place he said to meet him is far enough from the camp that they won’t be able to hurt anyone else if it is a trap. I’ll go alone and I’ll take responsibility, and –”

“No,” Derek said, and I could feel the weight of an order behind the statement. 

I tried to pull back, feeling betrayed that Derek would use his Alpha-status against me, but he just tilted my head up softly for a second time. “No,” he repeated, cupping my face in his hands. “We’ll go together.” 

\--

_I haven’t had time to turn in my most recent pages when Chris Argent shows up in my cell. He looks better than the last time I saw him, but not by much. His mouth twists as he takes in my injuries, but he doesn’t say anything until his escort has wandered back down the halls._

_I’m not really sure how to feel about him – thankful, jealous, angry, ambivalent? – so I just wait for him to talk._

_“Danny warned me,” he says lowly, glancing toward the door. Rookie mistake, and not one I’d expect from a trained hunter, but I guess he’s feeling more like the hunted right about now. “He told me I should leave town.”_

_“And yet you’re here,” I croak, spreading my fingers along the chipped wood of my small table. “Stupid move.”_

_“One in a long series.” He moves toward me and I flinch back; one of us needs to keep up appearances. He still might have time to get out, if Kate is still busy._

_“What’s your sister up to these days?” I aim for casual with an edge of snark, just in case Pete decides to mosey in, but the words hit Chris like a punch in the gut. Obviously he doesn’t know anything._

_I’m so sick of not knowing anything, and it makes me angry, quickly. “Why the fuck are you here, Argent?”_

_“I have a message from Derek,” he says._

_A whine escapes before I can control it, and he averts his eyes – out of respect or pity, I’m not really sure._

_“He says that he misses you.”_

_My claws extend, biting into the already-swollen skin of my palms._

_“They both miss you. They need you to be strong.”_

_“Get out,” I order, and he listens. He walks away without a word, and I manage to hold in the tears until the sound of his footsteps fade._

\--

**July 2014**

Sometimes I wonder how our lives would be different if it had turned out to be a trap. If Chris hadn’t shown up with that pale, unconscious boy in tow, would I have fought as hard as I did? Would I have made the same sacrifices? Would I have pushed as many limits? 

I mean, those questions are irrelevant now, because the simple fact is that Chris was telling the truth, and Derek and I gained a son. 

*

“Are you sure you’re going to bite him out here?” I glanced around the forest, hyper-vigilant. There were no patrols scheduled – we had checked before we left camp – and no one expected us back until the next day, but I didn’t want to go through all this effort only to have Logan thrown into the wild because he was born an Argent. 

“It’ll be easier to explain this way,” Derek said for the tenth time. He was tense, and dreading having to go through the trouble of giving the bite once again. 

“It’s gonna work, Der,” I whispered softly, shifting Logan from one arm to the other and smoothing his dark hair back from his eyes. 

He didn’t look anything like the Argents that I’d seen on television, not that it mattered. People adopted children all the time, and Logan had been hospitalized for so long that I was sure he’d barely remember his old family. They’d had a funeral for him two months ago, Chris had told us before he left, barely able to keep back the tears. They’d already said their goodbyes. 

Derek didn’t reply, but he did let me thread my fingers through his, and his heartbeat evened out. 

“It’s going to work,” I repeated, completely sure. Instinctually, I could feel it, in the same way I had before Derek had given me the bite: the three of us were meant to be a family, making the alternative impossible. 

*

For the first two weeks after getting the bite, Logan followed Derek around like an imprinted duckling. He clung to his leg when he was feeling shy, dangled from his arms when he wanted to play, and snuggled close to his chest at night. He had very little time for me, even going as far as to growl when he felt I was monopolizing Derek’s attention. Still, when I saw the way that Derek looked at him – glassy-eyed and amazed – I couldn’t bring myself to be irritated. There was no backlash when Derek stepped forward to request Logan as a member of his pack, mostly because everyone could sense how futile a challenge would be. Thankfully, everyone was too busy trying to figure out how to fortify the quickly-growing camp to ask too many questions about the whole situation. After a few days it seemed that everyone had forgotten that Logan hadn’t been with us since our arrival. 

He had been with us for almost a month when Derek had to leave for the first time. Though he didn’t really have an active role in camp hierarchy at that time, he was still an Alpha, and was needed for certain missions. Shamans, who came with some of the larger packs, were in charge of fortifying our defenses, and sometimes their wards required the assistance of an Alpha. 

Derek was reluctant to leave, talking about separation anxiety and potential hazards and the need for reassurance, and to be honest, I was a little annoyed at his lack of faith. I mean, he was clearly Logan’s favourite, but I figured the time away meant a little bonding time for the two of us. Before I was bitten I had volunteered at the library and even worked at a summer camp; kids loved me. Plus, werewolf or not, Logan still toddled around on stubby little legs and got scared by his own sneezes, so I figured that there was only so much trouble he could get into. 

Turns out, I was wrong. Derek hadn’t been gone an hour before I was wishing for him to come back. Everything he was able to accomplish by flashing the Alpha eyes or with a low warning grumble, took begging, pleading, and blood sacrifice to the angry toddler Gods from me. Logan bit, scratched, refused to nap, and basically made me feel like an intruder who had infringed on his perfect life with Derek. More than a little hurt, I decided to just let him be, and took some books to the corner of our small room while he played with some stuffed animals Derek had snagged from one of the larger packs. I figured he would fall asleep burrowed into one of Derek’s t-shirts, but as soon as his eyes began to droop I would turn a page and his gaze would flick over to me. 

I read through two, maybe three chapters, when he started to creep quietly forward. Whenever I would raise my eyes he would freeze, then turn back to his stuffed animals and babble happily. 

He may not have been biologically ours, but that kid had Derek Hale written all over him, even back then. 

By the time I was five chapters in, Logan had scooted up as far as my legs. He gummed his fingers as I turned through the pages, and after a few minutes of being ignored, let out a loud “Bah!” and knocked a chubby fist against the cover. When I looked up, smiling, he ran across the room to a small stack of board books that he had ignored ever since Derek found them. He grabbed one with a bright yellow cover and dragged it over. 

“Me?” he said, eyes wide and hopeful. He dropped the book on my lap, and I picked it up with shaking hands. 

“Me!” he yelled again when I opened to the first page. 

As soon as I started to read, his head fell back against my arm, and I had to fight to hold back tears. 

*

Things didn’t change between Logan and Derek for a long time. It took months for him to open up, for him to come to me after a fall or when he was sleepy or hungry. Derek’s presence calmed him instantly, while I had to work for it. But every night, before Derek settled him into bed, he walked over to his toy bin, grabbed a handful of books, and dumped them in my lap. 

I’d like to say I regret the way I acted during this war. I’d like to say that I would do things differently. But when I think back to those early nights, when the three of us laughed over _The Book with No Pictures_ , I know that would be a fucking lie. 

\-- 

_“I didn’t take you for a liar, Stilinski.”_

_I’ve seen Kate in all kinds of moods. She’s been annoyed, gleeful, fanatic, bored, and contemplative. This, however, is new. I’ve never once seen her angry, and it makes me unreasonably proud. “Didn’t take you for an idiot, Kate.”_

_She grabs my hair and yanks back so that my head slams against the table. The laptop clatters to the floor and she kicks it away as she straddles me. “When I asked you to complete this little project, Stiles,” she hisses, her breath hot in my ear, “I expected honesty. And since I watched my nephew die, I think that means you’re being naughty.”_

_“What pisses you off more?” I squeeze out a breath, trying to ignore the pressure of her nails at my temples. “That Chris pulled one over on you or that Derek knows your family’s biggest secret?”_

_My head whips back before I even realize that Kate’s hit me. “That little mongrel is not an Argent,” she snarls._

_“You’re right,” I say, spitting blood onto the concrete. “He’s a Hale.”_

\--

**January 2015**

I had always heard that couples start to fight a lot more after they have kids. Makes sense, I guess; for a typical family you have tighter finances, less free time, and a serious drop in sex. For Derek and I, the opposite seemed to happen. Having Logan around loosened him in a way that even I had never seen. He was quicker to smile and completely devoted. If Logan wanted to play-hunt, then we play-hunted. If Logan wanted to sleep in, we slept in. Derek “pancakes are not a dinner food” Hale suddenly became Derek “make chocolate chip pancakes at any hour of the day” Hale. We had no finances to worry about, and werecubs were enough of a rarity that it wasn’t any trouble to find some alone time if we wanted it. 

Sometimes it seemed like things were a little too perfect. I mean, we were fighting a war. Werewolves left camp and never came back. Internment camps were a horrifying reality, and we lost as many wolves as we saved on every rescue mission. Still, I was so caught up in the perfect joy of my tiny family that it seemed like none of that could touch us. We had never been better. We were happy. We were invincible. 

We were pretty goddamn naïve. 

*

Logan had been with us for nearly six months before the reality of our situation had any impact on his life. He was too young to understand anything at pack meetings, and the only way to get information from outside the camp was on one of the four televisions, to which he had zero access. Sometimes, when we lost someone we liked or respected, he picked up on our sadness, but it didn’t really mean any more to him than the sadness he felt when he misplaced his stuffed wolf or was denied an evening snack. 

The raid should never have happened. We had spent almost a year fortifying the camp against invaders and with the help of emissaries from the larger packs, we thought there was no way that the Argents or any of their government officials could find us. 

Unfortunately, as it turned out, we were not the only ones with access to magic. 

In the years after, we learned a lot about the Argents’ agenda. Even though they hated the supernatural, they had no problem twisting them to serve their own purposes. We uncovered the existence of no less than three separate suicide squads – supernatural creatures who were promised leniency, for themselves or their families – and it was the first of these that attacked on the day we were getting ready to throw an impromptu birthday party. 

Derek, obviously, was the first one to notice that something was out of order. I think he just spent so much time assuming that something was going to go wrong that he had no choice but to be right sometimes. The three of us were walking along a small creek on the east end of camp, looking for tiny stickleback fish and pushing the limits of how muddy one two-year-old could get. One minute I was laughing, running to pluck Logan out of a pile of swampy brambles, and the next I was pushed on my back with a snarling, partially-shifted Derek in front of me. 

There were a few beats of eerie silence before the screaming started. Panicked and unable to smell any humans or wolfsbane, I scooped Logan into my chest and ran for our little shelter. It wasn’t much, but there was a trunk big enough to stash Logan inside and spelled by one of the emissaries so that no one would be able to smell him. Plus, it was easier for us to defend an enclosed space than wait in the forest like sitting ducks. 

By the time we got home the smell of blood was high and sharp in the air. I could smell something, but still no humans. Derek had fully shifted and was running circles around the two of us, hair bristling and eyes glowing red. 

Logan, who had never experienced anything like this, was frozen against my chest, only letting a little whimper escape every few minutes. It took some coaxing to get him into the trunk, with me trying to explain to him that it was a game. Derek spared a second to come over and nuzzle his neck before taking off across the green. He snapped his jaws quickly at me, clearly communicating a stay put. 

As if there was anywhere else I could be. 

I spent the next four hours hunched in front of the door, partially shifted and ready to tear apart anyone who dared come near. I could feel Derek as a steady pull against my chest, but I still worried, knowing that he would do any number of idiotic things to keep us safe. 

The minutes felt like hours, and by the time Derek returned, exhausted and afraid, I was ready to collapse. Even though we were all okay, something broke in me that day, as I pulled a shaking Logan from his hiding place. I lost my sense of security, my stupid assurance that everything would be all right. 

*

Derek was on edge for days after the attack. He barely slept, and when he did he jolted awake sweating and panicked more often than not. Logan picked up on his anxiety and was a trembling, whiney mess, which meant that I was completely overwhelmed by trying to comfort them both. So when Derek volunteered to go out on a patrol for the night, I was much less resistant than usual. I felt guilty about it, but I was actually relieved to get a reprieve from his pacing. I thought, foolishly, that some time away was exactly what he needed. I didn’t even stop to think about why he was so insistent on leaving. I should have suspected something. I knew Derek better than anyone and I should have known.

*

I felt them long before I could smell or see them. Three wolves, infringing on the bond that I shared with Derek and Logan. Three unknown wolves who had been invited into my pack – into my _family_ – without my knowledge or consent. Three new, out-of-control recruits who could have been spies or feral or just plain assholes. 

I wanted to kill Derek. 

“Logan,” I said mildly, breaking his intense concentration. He looked up from his pile of blocks, with his tongue between his teeth. “Dada?” he asked, holding out a block. 

“Not right now,” I replied, putting the block back in his pile. “Right now we’re going to go see Auntie Lulu.”

Lucille was an elderly werewolf and an expert on Werewolf Rights from Santa Cruz. We spent a lot of time with her; all her grandchildren were human and she hadn’t seen them since the Segregation law had passed. Luckily Logan adored her, and it took less than ten minutes to get him settled in for a tea party. If Lucille noticed that something was wrong, she had the grace to ignore it in favour of digging out cookies for Logan. 

Derek was waiting for me when I got back. The three new werewolves were hanging a few feet behind him, silent and deferential. One of them, a scantily-clad blonde girl with bright red lipstick, stepped forward as if to say something, but a warning growl from Derek sent her stumbling backward. 

I hated them. I didn’t know a single thing about them other than the fact that Derek had chosen to bring them into my life, and I hated them. 

“Let’s get this over with,” I snapped, disappearing through the front door before Derek could argue. 

“Stiles,” he started as her followed me in. 

“Don’t Stiles me!” I was so angry I could barely think straight. Though he wouldn’t get in trouble with camp members for biting humans, if he had been caught he would have been killed. Not arrested, not segregated, murdered on the spot. Newly bitten wolves were unpredictable and volatile and I didn’t want anything to do with them. I spent years contemplating the possibility of the bite, and even with Derek’s influence, with our profound connection, my first shift had still been the single most terrifying experience of my life. 

“I had no choice, Stiles.” 

“No choice? Of course you had a choice! For one, you had the choice to run this by me!”

Derek’s eyes flashed at the blatant challenge, and it was a testament to how exhausted he was that he just let the feeling take him over. “I am your Alpha,” he growled, taking a step toward me. 

“You are my _partner_ ,” I countered, pushing through the instinct to submit. The weight of his disapproval was heavy, and made me feel like I was wading through sludge, but I fought against it. “You’re not my boss,” I added for good measure, taking a vindictive pleasure in the way the statement made him flinch. 

One of the newly turned wolves whined, and I could hear the other two trying to hold him back. 

“They’re eavesdropping,” I hissed through newly-dropped fangs. 

“They can’t help it, Stiles.” Derek sounded resigned, as if he knew that this was the reaction he was going to receive. That knowledge – that certainty – that I didn’t want these new pack members, just pissed me off even more. Derek had deliberately betrayed my trust, and it was going to take a long fucking time for me to forgive him for that. “They can’t control their senses yet.” 

“No fucking shit, Derek.” I paced across the room, kicking clothes out of the way as I moved. “They can’t control anything. They’re a danger, to themselves and to this pack.” I glanced down at the pile of books that was scattered on our bed. “They’re a danger to Logan.” 

Derek looked so hurt that I nearly backed down. I nearly gave in and invited the three new betas in for introductions. 

Derek, however, wasn’t ready to back down. 

“ _Everything_ is a danger to Logan, Stiles,” he replied. “You’re both in danger, and I can’t protect you alone.” He slumped over, running his hands through his hair, and I couldn’t stop myself from wrapping my arms around him. Bossy, posturing Alpha-Derek pissed me off, but vulnerable, overprotective Derek just made me hurt. 

“You think the Scooby Squad out there is going to be any help?” 

Derek huffed a laugh, letting himself fall forward into my chest. “They’re pack, and pack makes you strong.

“Please don’t fight me on this, Stiles,” he pleaded into my shoulder. “I just want to protect you.” 

And how could I fault him for that, when everything I had done - everything I knew I would do – was to protect him?


	5. Interlude II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “We received a message from the IPA,” Scott says.

Derek can sense that something’s wrong as soon as he walks into the Den. There are people spread out everywhere, sprawled across tables, huddled in front of radios, and glued to the small television that’s propped on an empty milk crate, but they’re quiet. Too quiet. And they just get quieter as he approaches Scott. 

“What is it?” he asks, terse. It’s already been a spectacularly shitty day, with Logan up at five o’clock and too afraid to go back to sleep. He’s been having nightmares about Derek disappearing, and if that’s not a big enough punch in the gut, he has to deal with Logan’s sniffles about how Stiles makes the best “feel-better” hot chocolate. He’s not sure how much longer he can pretend to be strong for his son. He’s not sure how much longer he can survive without his mate. 

He’s expecting another particularly brutal passage in Stiles’ forced exposé – there was a section a couple days ago about one of their early days with Logan that had made him upset enough that Erica and Boyd had to take the cub for the night – but when Scott turns around to talk to him he doesn’t smell sad, or worried, or angry. He smells guilty. He even looks guilty, which is new. Scott McCall has been an open book since the day he arrived, and even when Derek – who was territorial and more than a little jealous over Stiles’ easy affection – didn’t particularly like him, he always trusted him to do the right thing. He made being an Alpha look easy. The responsibility, the empathy, the understanding, they all came naturally to him in a way that they didn’t for Derek. 

“Scott?” Derek can feel the anger pooling in his gut, and does his best to calm down. Sometimes being in close contact with so many other Alphas can take its toll, especially with Stiles gone. Everything is harder with Stiles gone. 

“We received a message from the IPA,” Scott says. He steps toward Derek, hand outstretched, but Derek’s not really in the mood for comfort. Erica takes a step closer to him from her position on one of the beaten-up sofas, but he shakes his head quickly. Whatever this is, he’s not interested in being coddled. 

“From Kate,” Derek says. It’s not a question, because he already knows he’s right. She’s spent most of her adult life taking things from him, and he knows she’s loving this. He’s sure nothing makes her happier than hurting the person he cares about the most in the world. He knows that Stiles is alive – can feel him, tenuously, through their bond – but there are a million things that she could do without his knowledge: torture, humiliation, public ridicule. She will take Stiles’ beautiful words – their private memories – and twist them against him, leaving just enough truth to make even the staunchest werewolf supporters change their minds. She will use the best parts of him to further her agenda, and Derek can’t do anything to stop her. 

“She proposed a trade,” Scott says. “She wants – ”

“Me,” Derek finishes. He doesn’t even take second to think it through. “Done. What are the terms, where will you get him, how long do we have…”  
“Derek, you can’t.” 

Though the words carry the weight of an Alpha, Scott still looks heartbroken to say them. That compassion is the only thing that keeps Derek from attacking immediately. As it is, he forces himself to step backward, his hands vibrating with the need to rip and tear. 

“Who’s going to stop me?” He can barely growl the words out past his fangs, and Erica and Boyd are at his side in an instant. 

“Derek,” Erica starts, but he cuts her off with a low growl. He’s not a violent Alpha, and tries to model his behavior after his mother, but he’s sure that if Erica doesn’t back off, she’s going to spend the night trying to regrow a perfectly good spleen. 

Through the commotion Scott’s eyes don’t even flash. Derek has a brief, despairing pang of jealousy for his composure, his perfect control, but the thought is quickly swallowed by his anger. 

“You know that Stiles wants – ” 

“Don’t you dare speak for Stiles,” Derek spits, and feels Boyd’s grip tighten around his wrist. 

This, more than anything else, seems to poke a hole in Scott’s composure. For a second he looks lost, and then he gathers himself and speaks softly. “Stiles talked to you about this, Derek. I know he did.”

It’s true, Derek can remember the conversation in painful detail. Still, agreeing to something before you can really understand what it means is idiotic. If Derek had only known, he would have fought Stiles. He would never have let him wear him down. He would never had made promises that are nearly fucking impossible to keep.

“He’s the brains behind the whole movement,” Derek tries desperately. “We need him.” _I need him_. 

“Things will run exactly as Stiles planned,” Scott says gently, his voice catching. 

“How am I supposed to explain this to Logan?” Derek asks. _How am I supposed to function without him?_

“You’re his Alpha,” Scott answers, stepping forward to put his hand on Derek’s shoulder. “His father. He trusts you to get him through this.”

“He doesn’t deserve this,” Derek whispers, before turning to leave. _It should be me instead._


End file.
